The Importance Of Snes On Gp2x

[OrR]

I'd like to play Secret Agent and Stunts... Any chance this is possible? :blink:

 

[DaveC]

We are way off topic here. Think SNES :angry:

 

[Esn]

I would love commander keen! Actually, i'm suprised the source code isn't available (it isn't, is it?). It seems like Id releases its source codes after it knows the games are no longer making them money. Is it because there's no interpreter (is that the technical term?) and core data files (like .pak or .wad) so they would have to release the complete game?

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I don't know about that (though I do know that IDSoftware definitely did NOT release the code), but if you go HERE, you'll see that the code seems to have been cracked and people are now making their own games using the keen engine. I don't visit the CC314 forums anymore so I have no idea how that happened...

We are way off topic here. Think SNES :angry:

​

Well, the screenshot for Jazz Jackrabbit looks rather similar to an SNES game, doesn't it?

 

[DaveC]

My hopes for perfect or near perfect SNES on the GP2X have just became dashed... I have tried the latest SNES emu on the PSP by Yoyo. While great it runs kind of slow and that is at 333 MHz and using both CPUs. If it runs slow with 2 333 MHz CPUs I have doubts now how it will run with 2 200 MHz CPUs. And if those CPUs have bus contention like Squidge noted, it may be even less likely.

I hope that there is some magic in there but I am not so sure after seeing SNES bringing the uber powerful PSP to it's knees. I am hoping it is because the PSP version is not optimised enough yet and somehow it will be still possible on the GP2X at a good speed. Heres hoping.

 

[Alpha2]

Something un-optimized is rarely a good indicator of how a program will run on another system. Keep in mind that different devs can get different levels of performance from different hardware.

 

[Jarska333]

Unoptimized snes is rather nice on GP32. I would not be too worried....

 

[polooo2]

Also should be noted that GP2X is built with SNES (and emus) in mind. No way in the world GPH is going to release a half ass hardware without being capable for a perfect SNES emu. SNES emu IS the selling point for GP2X after all.

 

[DaveC]

Also should be noted that GP2X is built with SNES (and emus) in mind. No way in the world GPH is going to release a half ass hardware without being capable for a perfect SNES emu. SNES emu IS the selling point for GP2X after all.

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I don't know that they built it with SNES in mind. They built it with movies and video in mind mostly with some gaming features added in(which is why they are calling it a "PMP"). They also built it based on the SoC because that was a ready -made chip and GPH doesn't have the money to develop their own custom hardware so they just used something off the shelf. I doubt the guys that designed the SoC designed it with SNES emulation in mind. We will soon see how well it can do it. I would guess somewhere less than the PSP but better than the current GP32.

 

[ratx]

Yep I agree with Dave, also marketting it as a "portable SNES" type device is not exactly going to make Nintendo very happy

 

[DaveC]

Unoptimized snes is rather nice on GP32. I would not be too worried....

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It is optimised on the GP32 with an ASM core. It is also very slow even using the lowest quality sound settings and no transparencies. I don't consider a SNES emu (or any emu) playable with no sound either so that doesn't count.

When I say "near perfect" I mean FS0-1 WITH full sound and transparencies.

 

[Hanz™]

My hopes for perfect or near perfect SNES on the GP2X have just became dashed... I have tried the latest SNES emu on the PSP by Yoyo. While great it runs kind of slow and that is at 333 MHz and using both CPUs. If it runs slow with 2 333 MHz CPUs I have doubts now how it will run with 2 200 MHz CPUs. And if those CPUs have bus contention like Squidge noted, it may be even less likely.

I hope that there is some magic in there but I am not so sure after seeing SNES bringing the uber powerful PSP to it's knees. I am hoping it is because the PSP version is not optimised enough yet and somehow it will be still possible on the GP2X at a good speed. Heres hoping.

​

WTF thats weird. SNES on the GP32 is apparently pretty playable if you can overclock to 154mhz or something.
I Wonder why the PSP is so slow.
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It is optimised on the GP32 with an ASM core. It is also very slow even using the lowest quality sound settings and no transparencies. I don't consider a SNES emu (or any emu) playable with no sound either so that doesn't count.

When I say "near perfect" I mean FS0-1 WITH full sound and transparencies.

Sound hasn't been optimised as far as I know, so that is why when you play SNES on the GP32 you should always turn off the sound.

 

[DaveC]

My hopes for perfect or near perfect SNES on the GP2X have just became dashed...  I have tried the latest SNES emu on the PSP by Yoyo.  While great it runs kind of slow and that is at 333 MHz and using both CPUs.  If it runs slow with 2 333 MHz CPUs I have doubts now how it will run with 2 200 MHz CPUs.  And if those CPUs have bus contention like Squidge noted, it may be even less likely.

I hope that there is some magic in there but I am not so sure after seeing SNES bringing the uber powerful PSP to it's knees.  I am hoping it is because the PSP version is not optimised enough yet and somehow it will be still possible on the GP2X at a good speed.  Heres hoping.

​

WTF thats weird. SNES on the GP32 is apparently pretty playable if you can overclock to 154mhz or something.
I Wonder why the PSP is so slow.
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It is optimised on the GP32 with an ASM core. It is also very slow even using the lowest quality sound settings and no transparencies. I don't consider a SNES emu (or any emu) playable with no sound either so that doesn't count.

When I say "near perfect" I mean FS0-1 WITH full sound and transparencies.

Sound hasn't been optimised as far as I know, so that is why when you play SNES on the GP32 you should always turn off the sound.

​

It isn't "so slow" but it does bog down in many cases. With the PSP's super power and Yoyo's l337 coding skillz you would think it would be be perfect (it may be someday).

Well playing games, especially SNES, with no sound just plain sucks balls in hell. That is why I never use the SNES emu on the GP32

 

[C B Felterbush]

Something you're not taking into account is the fact that unlike the
PSP which uses hardware designed for 3D apps. The GP2x is specializing
in 2D with an advanced 2D graphics accelerator. This alone allows it to
be more capable of producing full speed SNES emulation than the PSP.

Gamepark Holdings claims that they did extensive testing and found
their main processor and 2D accelerator performed better than a
single 400mhz CPU

Remember the speed we were able to pull out of the single 166, though
it was no where near 100% more like 75-80%. I was able to play Front Mission with sound and speeds close to that. I think from a hardware perspective
the GP2x IS optimized for 2D emulation, and thus will out perform the
PSP in nearly all aspects of 16bit emulation. Also I am willing to go even
further and say that with 75% certainty that there will be a SNES emulator
on release that will run at near (90%, with sound, transparencies) full
speed, and after release there will be a second version in a time span
of say 1-2 months that will put your SNES at 99%.

gp32_console gp32_console gp32_console gp32_console

 

[TyBO!]

C B Felterbush makes some great points there... Sony wasn't thinking "Lets make a portable system designed to primarily play 2D games." They wanted to make a system that was essentially a portable Playstation 2, thus, it's not really a good choice for 2D emulation.

Also, I'm no expert on this, but doesn't it make a big difference when you have the official System Developers Kit? All of the work done on the PSP has been through working around Sony's "piracy protection," while the GP2X has no such thing.

I'm almost 100% positive that the GP2X will have perfect SNES emulation in a matter of months.



[EDIT:] ... and let us not forget, in the "Main Feature" section of gpx2.com, under "Game" it says "MAME, SNES, etc." indicating GPH probably had SNES in mind when making the GP2X.

 

[unlucky]

I'm not sure the psp is the best example. Its graphics chip seems purely for 3d functions, people seem to often mention 2 333mhz cpu's this seems a bit crazy. The second core is mainly for media functionality something we feared for the second core of the gp2x. I seem to have pulled up this quote from google "Media Engine and VME/AVE are not user programmable." (VME being the second core) This to me doesn't sound hopeful though i am no low level programmer would this effectively write the second core out of emulator usuage? Another point is its gpu isn't programmable either so getting it to help out with emulation sounds like a difficult task more so than getting the VME to help.

I'm happy to be proven otherwise, it would simply drive me to buy a psp instead of the gp2x. But right now the gp2x sounds more exciting with 2 200mhz cores, and maybe its best feature is the use of SD cards which are ridiculously cheap.

 

[DaveC]

Something you're not taking into account is the fact that unlike the
PSP which uses hardware designed for 3D apps. The GP2x is specializing
in 2D with an advanced 2D graphics accelerator. This alone allows it to
be more capable of producing full speed SNES emulation than the PSP.

Gamepark Holdings claims that they did extensive testing and found
their main processor and 2D accelerator performed better than a
single 400mhz CPU   

Remember the speed we were able to pull out of the single 166, though
it was no where near 100% more like 75-80%. I was able to play Front Mission with sound and speeds close to that. I think from a hardware perspective
the GP2x IS optimized for 2D emulation, and thus will out perform the
PSP in nearly all aspects of 16bit emulation. Also I am willing to go even
further and say that with 75% certainty that there will be a SNES emulator
on release that will run at near (90%, with sound, transparencies) full
speed, and after release there will be a second version in a time span
of say 1-2 months that will put your SNES at 99%.  

gp32_console  gp32_console  gp32_console  gp32_console

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Emus are very CPU speed dependant. The 3D chip in the PSP is used for Yoyo's emus so it must be somewhat programmable for emus.

The SNES emu on the GP32 also didn't even bother doing the transparencies either. If you added that it would be VERY slow. So now we have this new hardware that has a SLIGHTLY higher clock speed. With just that we could maybe get SNES running at fs 2-3 with low quality sound and no transparencies. Now that other CPU comes in. Will it be enough to add transparencies, good sound, and a decent framerate? There is bus contention between these CPUs too so it is not known how much it will actually help.

That "2D accelerator performed better than a single 400mhz CPU" thing was related to *movies* not emus. Because of the hardware video decoding extensions that is likely true for movies. That video decoding hardware is useless for emus though. For emulation the performance of that other CPU is still not really known.

I guess we will see soon enough.

 

[C B Felterbush]

You are thinking too simple, though the processing power of one of the duals is SLIGHTLY less, the other coupled with specialized 2D attributes SHOULD allow full speed.

Take this approach, emulate the system and play the rom,
as well as produce quality audio. Then with the other use the 2D video acceleration to boost the actual rom speed., and intergrading the transparencies where needed.

The duals will split the function between the two heaviest hitters audio and video. Then in an SLi Graphix split type effect the two come together in the middle to layer down and merge audio with video producing a fast, high quality rom playback. B)

A custom wrote emulator would split these two functions from the start allowing the processor which was SPECIALLY designed for 2D and video acceleration to do just that. Then allow the other to compile accurate sound while running the emulator itself.

gp32_console gp32_console gp32_console gp32_console

 

[Cyclops]

Emus are very CPU speed dependant. The 3D chip in the PSP is used for Yoyo's emus so it must be somewhat programmable for emus.

The SNES emu on the GP32 also didn't even bother doing the transparencies either. If you added that it would be VERY slow. So now we have this new hardware that has a SLIGHTLY higher clock speed. With just that we could maybe get SNES running at fs 2-3 with low quality sound and no transparencies. Now that other CPU comes in. Will it be enough to add transparencies, good sound, and a decent framerate? There is bus contention between these CPUs too so it is not known how much it will actually help.

That "2D accelerator performed better than a single 400mhz CPU" thing was related to *movies* not emus. Because of the hardware video decoding extensions that is likely true for movies. That video decoding hardware is useless for emus though. For emulation the performance of that other CPU is still not really known.

I guess we will see soon enough.

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I really think you should think about what you write, rather than just spouting other peoples random knowledge. The new hardware is not SLIGHTLY faster thats a lie. Ignoring oveclocking and important to do so, the GP2X is 1/3 faster than the GP32. Thats an equvelant of my desktop going from 3Ghz to 4Ghz. Thats quite a step on its own without talking about co-processers dual-core etc. and how they can be used, and I suspect very strongly you don't know. What you are doing is lying though ignorance.

 

[Cyclops]

That came across a little stonger tham I'd liked.

 

[Squidge]

DaveC: Don't forget the PSP is exactly the same as the GP2X with regards to sharing the memory between 2 processors, just as the PSP only has 32mb shared between them, whereas the GP2X has 64mb.

Emu's will certainly be able to run much faster on a GP2X than a GP32 (more so if they take advantage of dual-processor), but don't count on the 2D accelerator doing much - after all, most emu's are just ported, rather than written specially for a system. Also, the 2D accelerator in the Zodiac has been out for ages now, and the only parts of that used for emulation are screen resizing.

Saying that though, if we sacrifice some compatability, speed can be increased by a phenomenal amount on some emu's by taking advantage of the 2D processor inside the GP2X.